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Arkansas News BureauThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

11:00 AM, Thursday, September 20 2012 | 1310 views | 0 | 2 | |

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas is the seventh most obese state in the nation, according to a national report released Tuesday.

The state ranked ninth last year in the annual report by Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The study said the state’s obesity rate of 30.9 percent is .3 percentage points above last year, and that Arkansas is one of a dozen states where nearly 1 in 3 adults is obese.

Mississippi has the highest adult obesity rate at 34.9 percent, while Colorado has the lowest rate at 20.7 percent. Twenty-six of the 30 states with the highest rates of obesity are in the South and Midwest.

More than two-thirds of adults in the United States, 68 percent, are either overweight or obese, according to the report. Among children ages 2-19, 16.9 percent are obese and 31.7 percent are overweight or obese.